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Thursday, October 27, 2016

Political Hatred And Its Potential Consequences

Have you noticed how, now that their screams of racism,sexism, and the like have lost essentially all their force, the Left’s cannon fodder has descended all the way to hater? For the moment let’s leave aside the vacuity (and the illiteracy) of the accusation. Consider instead what it means – about them.

Hatred is an important force in human relations. It’s responsible for all willed, non-sociopathic attempts to do harm to another person. That, after all, is what the verb to hate means: to detest someone so greatly that one wishes him actual harm. When it becomes imperative – i.e., when it becomes the force that impels one’s decisions and actions – the person animated by hatred will seek to do such harm.

So, Gentle Reader: Whom do you hate, and why?

I’d bet the mortgage money that the answer is no one. You might dislike certain other people for specific reasons. You might feel wounded by things they’ve said or done. You might go to considerable lengths to avoid them. But you have no plans to do them harm. Indeed, the thought would never occur to you.

Moreover, the same is true of any man of good will. So why do we wince when Leftist mouthpieces and agitators scream hater at us? Especially since now that Project Veritas’s undercover investigators have revealed how far the Left is willing to go to have its way, including violence against peaceable private citizens and the theft and destruction of their property, it stands convicted of the very sentiment with which it charges us.

The haters are marching, all right. They’re those who hurl the epithet.

For quite some time, left-liberals have preened themselves for their moral superiority -- what Thomas Sowell calls their "vision of differential rectitude" -- to those who disagree with them. On the strength of that assumed superiority, they have deemed themselves exempt from the requirements for courteous persuasion, for demonstrable results, even for candid presentation of their intentions to us benighted ones. Instead, they've used political power of several forms to impose their preferences on the country, have retroactively revised their goals when they failed to meet the ones they originally stated, and have increasingly turned to stealth to get their way. They have disdained to stand to account for any failure, be it practical or moral. They have shielded those of their own who've demonstrably exploited political privilege for personal gain, though they've condemned the ordinary self-interest of private citizens and have done all they could to thwart it.

When, despite all its efforts to attain unchallengeable power, a Leftist movement falls short, it reaches inside itself for additional motivation – additional hatred. If found, that increment of hatred will power still worse tactics. Such tactics are on display in this election season. Examples can be witnessed at just about any public rally for Donald Trump. The most recent Project Veritas videos:

November 8, 2016 has the potential to be far worse. Indeed, I expect there to be well distributed reports of actual violence against prospective voters – and the main stream media will systematically describe it in the passive voice, as if there were no one to blame for it.

Here’s why:

[H]atred is best combined with Fear. Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful—horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; Hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. [From The Screwtape Letters]

Indeed, C. S. Lewis has understated the case. Fear potentiates hatred, much as Vitamin C potentiates aspirin. It amplifies one’s desire to hate the person feared, and therefore one’s willingness to inflict harm on him. And at no time these past sixty years has the Left known greater fear than it does today.

Once it had established its seemingly unassailable bastions in the media, the educational industry, the arts, and the bureaucracies, the Left viewed its position as permanent, immune to any possible countermeasure. They believed they could rely on the Republican Party’s tacit compliance with “the established order,” as any upsetting of the applecart would imperil too many “rice bowls.” While the GOP remained unwilling to mount a serious attack on that order, their confidence persisted and grew stronger.

The political ascent of Donald Trump was unanticipated by anyone “inside” that order, whether in office or in the media. As it became clear that Republican strategists and kingmakers were unable to thwart his nomination, the Left’s fears grew. A barbarian had come to the Establishment’s gate. His prospects could not be dismissed. He had to be stopped – and to the Left, that has always meant “by any means necessary.”

The old tactics – slander, vilification, the disruption of Trump rallies and the encouragement of specious accusations against him – have failed. Even the open refusal of top figures in the GOP to support Trump has availed nothing. The barbarian remains at the gate, weapons in hand, and the true size of his horde cannot be known before Election Day. Something must be done.

There’s only one tactic left. It’s odds-on to be deployed on November 8.

There are no guarantees in politics. The Democrats might prevail, whether honestly or fraudulently. But their fear is a palpable force, and it’s elevated their hatred to levels unprecedented in American politics. The probability that they will express it violently is greater than it has been since the “Days of Rage” made memorable by Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, and the Weathermen. No one who goes to the polls can be certain he’s perfectly safe.

You discussed there the milder form of providing arguments and situations aimed at protecting the established order. But even there it seems they counted on the Left making demands both peaceful and violent so that those in power could grab more power.

But now that they are panicking, I think your analysis is correct. To literally see the conversion of fear into hatred, look at this photo.)

So because they are fearful of so many who have bridled under their yoke and are seeking to remove them, they have turned out the violent reactionaries instead of the relying on the sophistic and often moronic talking heads. (The antidisestablishmentarian old fogies are hardly seen anymore.)

It's not yet quite so bad here as in the EU. There when people come out to protest the open borders and other rotten issues, the "AntiFa" is permitted to rampage wearing masks and likely for the same reason that the KKK at its height was permitted to wear hoods to keep Jim Crow.

It remains to be seen how bad it will be between now and November 8. Your warning should be heeded.